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I’m going to keep this apolitical and not talk about any side in specific, but how does a government tell the truth when people don’t want to hear it? I want some actual discussion from this ESPECIALLY from those who think the Government correcting anyone on anything is censorship because the logic doesn’t seem to be cohesive.
Let’s say somebody fucked up badly and now you (yes you) are a leader of whatever federal government side you’d like and your side happens to be in power.
Someone posts a blog article on a social media site that says “(YOUR NAME HERE) Is Going To Kill Us All And Does Horrible Things To Animal Butts”. It’s filled with all kinds of scathing insults and made up crap that you didn’t do. It focuses on the fact that you went on a vacation last year for a week. But the blog post says that it wasn’t a vacation, it was a trip to plan how to kill everyone and put things into animal butts. So many things. Gross things. You’ve not done anything they’re talking about, but people DO know that you had a vacation.
It continues to get shared enough that opinion-based media sites start covering it. Not saying it’s true, simply covering the initial post and saying that someone else says it’s true. That way they can’t be sued, y’see. Someone posts a badly photoshopped picture of you with one hand holding a stack of paperwork with the title “Secret Government Plan #127 - How to Murder Everyone I don’t Like and Continue Molesting Animals.” It’s badly edited, but dumb people continue to share it because they don’t like you and some people are calling it real.
You release an official statement stating your innocence, but the people who are on the opposite political side from you are saying you’re lying. They want to have you stand trial. You’ve done nothing, but some are already saying you’re using your power to NOT have to stand trial otherwise the police would have stopped you. Some are saying the police are in on it! So… how do you solve this?
How, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is?
And I mean something long term, true, and without pissing off half the population because you’re “telling them how to think” (even if “how they think” is just made up bullshit designed to piss them off and emotionally manipulate them).
How, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is?
In short, how, as a government in power, do you combat disinformation spread by people who genuinely don’t know or care what the truth is without outright censorship?
I like the “lying-by-omission” approach, that is used widely in practice. I tell only the truth, but carefully select which truths to tell.
Concrete example: When there is a war going on, where I strongly favor on side, I will either not talk about it at all (e.g. what the EU did with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict). Or I will select stories that fit my narrative. I.e. a dead soldier on our side is a tragedy, which will be followed up by personal stories about his live, his family, etc. But a dead soldier on their side will be portrait as a great victory, and which will be followed up by documentary on our superior training and weapons-technologie.
This isn’t really combating mis- or disinformation at all, this is propagandizing. I’d argue that this isn’t a good thing at all.
No it’s not. Except if your question is:
The answer is: they don’t. Why should they?
Because otherwise it doesn’t answer the question asked and has nothing to do with this thread:
If you are in the position outlined in the prompt and correcting misinformation is required, what are you to do? Lying by omission is… well, it’s not a solution.
I think this point grazes by a very common discussion you get where some people will insist that anything that isn’t outright lying is okay while others will say that anything that is broadly deceptive or misleading is impossible. (Maybe some people at the extremes who say you should tell the whole truth at all times).
This is just my personal approach but in an environment that’s gossipy, I tend to refuse to answer all questions because I don’t like lying, but if you selectively refuse to answer something like “Do you like x person,” or “Do you know something about y situation?” but normally answer no, then yes is obvious. But if you consistently refuse to answer any kinds of these leading questions you can both avoid lying and giving away information you don’t want to. (Imo few people realize that in addition to truth and lie there is refusal/silence).